Whaling Wrangle Continues in Antarctic

In the end, despite all the efforts to prevent it from happening, the Ady Gil -- a speedboat equipped with state-of-the-art technology -- sank off the Antarctic coast on Thursday.

“The crew worked the whole day to salvage the Ady Gil,” Paul Watson, the founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society explained. “The decision was made to tow it to a French research base on the coast but the attempt failed because it just increased the flow of water into the Ady Gil and the crew were just unable to keep it afloat.”

“What they were able to do was to remove all the oil and the fuel so there is no possibility of a pollution event happening. But the vessel has been lost.”

"Deliberate" ramming of the Ady Gil?

The vessel had been hot on the tails of a Japanese whaling fleet, which has been hunting in the icy waters of the Southern Ocean.

Sea Shepherd says the Ady Gil was deliberately rammed by the Japanese ship, the Shonan Maru 2, but the Japanese Fisheries Agency says the whaling ship was unable to avoid a collision when the speedboat slowed down as it crossed its path.

The Japanese government has gone so far as to label the Sea Shepherd activists eco-terrorists.

Nobody was seriously injured by the collision but one of the six crew members did suffer broken ribs. Paul Watson said it was fortunate nobody had been in the bow that was completely sliced off.

He said that the whaling ships should have come to the wrecked speedboat’s help because “they were responsible -- they destroyed the vessel. In the effort to try and keep it from polluting the ocean, I think they should have offered some assistance but they refused to acknowledge any distress they caused."

He thought they had refused to help because they wanted the Sea Shepherds' other ship, the Steve Irwin, to come in order to put a tail on it. The Japanese team has been using harpoon boats to tail the activists and to relay their position in advance to the whaling ships. The Shepherds have now deployed a helicopter to find the fleet.

Investigators from Australia, Japan and New Zealand look into matter

Meanwhile, Canberra has launched an investigation into the matter because the incident happened in territory that Australia lays claim to.

But legal expert Don Rothwell from National University doubted whether the Australians would achieve much “primarily because Japan does not recognise Australia’s claim over the waters offshore the Australian Antarctic Territory, an Australian vessel was not involved in the incident and nor does it appear that any Australian national was injured.”

New Zealand, where the Ady Gil was registered, is also investigating. Government representatives from New Zealand and Japan have met in Wellington to resolve the question of guilt. In the meantime, the anti-whaling activists continue their struggle in the South Pacific.

Author: Bernd Musch-Burowska/Anne Thomas
Editor: Thomas Bärthlein